"You cannot refuse!" Prince Jones declared.
"I can. You're not even in the same year range. How is it fair for you to challenge me with anything on the line?"
"Don't call me Sally. To you I am Saliafreid." The princess added when she was called princess Sally.
Jones must have hit a brick wall since he seemed at a loss for words, however my curiosity on what the hell an Arcana was had won me over.
"How about this? If you can't defeat me in one minute, I win." I said.
"I accept!" Jones quickly said, as if I would take back the offer.
"Seriously!" The princess spoke.
"Are you sure brother?" My sister asked.
"Yea yea. I'm sure."
The teachers looked at each other before guiding us to the arena.
Jones seemed real happy the whole time and it was about now I had guessed everyones reactions were because he was ridiculously strong. However since I hadn't heard of any 4th year students being rank-3 masters. In fact I had only heard of a handful of people even in the 6th year being rank-3 masters.
Most of the teachers here were also rank-3 masters, with a few rank-4 and rank-5. With the headmaster being at the top of the known power system, a rank-6 demigod.
Soon enough, a small crowd had gathered around the arena and the teacher stood between me and Jones. As usual, I drew my sword and held it down in the ocean splitting arts normal stance.
"Begin!" The teacher's hand went down and there were two small explosions where Jones and I had been standing, followed by a clash of swords where I was pushed back a few metres before we fell into a long exchange of blows before separating again.
Safe to say I was surprised. He was definitely strong, stronger than my sister who had just recently become rank-2d2, he was even stronger than me too. But that was about it. He wasn't overwhelmingly strong or anything. I could easily last 5 or ten minutes if I exercised caution.
With minimal use of acceleration I didn't even need the new blink skill in order to match jones. We crashed in an explosive hypersonic exchange of a few tens of strikes before pulling back, resting a moment and going at it again. While Jones continued to push me back, he couldn't land any clean blows on me. Just like that, the minute was up.
"A minutes up! Dirksen Han Vowser wins!" The teacher called out, closely followed by a "What!" As Jones started yelling at the teacher.
"How has a minute finished! I haven't even gone hard on him." Jones complained while I sheathed my sword.
"Then you shouldn't have held back." I said, turning around to leave.
The moment the quest showed up dollar signs appeared in my eyes, no one liked this jones guy anyways and so long as it wasn't a permanent or life-threatening injury I would just get a single strike on my record at most. I mobilised a massive amount of energy in an instant, pushing accelerate momentarily to 10 times, using blink, weapon aura and ocean splitting arts as I spun on my heel and slashed, physical enhancement of course at max.
It was so fast that I didn't even properly see what happened, but for some reason it felt like my sword went way deeper than expected. I had aimed across his chest, causing a deep gash but without hitting any vitals. From what I understood, such an injury was relatively common during intense academy duels, yet it felt like I had cut something off. No matter the position, the way I striked wouldn't have hit his neck and I would have felt it if I had hit his skull. It felt like I had cut off an arm rather than caused a deep, non-lethal gash.
I turned around to survey the damage and found the guy on the ground in a strange position.
"Hey, I wasn't going all out either y'know." I said, completing the quest and preparing for the yells I was about to receive for attacking an unguarded opponent.
Contrary to what I prepared for though, I wasn't the one yelled at.
"You fool!" The teacher yelled. "Even if you're a prince, attacking an unguarded opponent with intent to kill is punishable by expulsion! Don't think you can disregard rules just because you're the prince of a kingdom. Even the empire's own royalty lose their status if they fail to graduate from the royal academy." The teacher berated, another of the teachers rushed over quickly and grabbed what I realised was an arm, lying separated from Jones body.
'Ahhh…' I thought as everything clicked together.
I had turned around and Jones had tried to stab me, probably through the heart based on the teacher's words. The system had thus given me the quest so that I could defend while intimidating Jones into submission. My sudden strike then missed and cut off his arm since he wasn't in the position I expected. I had thought the quest was sudden and strange and now I understood what a 'Sudden quest!' Was. Evidently it was one that needed to be completed immediately.
"Ahh! Are you okay!?" My sister was the first to grab me, suddenly hugging me before I could dodge and knocking us both to the ground. I sighed, it felt like this had become more troublesome than expected. It would be really annoying if the prince came for revenge or something.
'Yea, about what I expected.' I thought. As for killing the prince within the month, it would be dangerous, unless...